Just a brief note: the Morning Briefing will take a Christmas vacation later this week. On Thursday and Friday and Monday we’ll have some down time.
— Erick
1. Gays, Hispanics, and National Security, Oh My!
2. An Avenue for Mike Pence?
3. Potemkin Villages of Democratic faith.
4. …And, So It Begins: The Public-Sector Ponzi Scheme is Collapsing
5. Filibuster Reform - “The Quest for Absolute Power”
6. Why Ken Paxton Should be Texas Speaker, and Why it Matters
7. Obama’s Path to Energy Independence?
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1. Gays, Hispanics, and National Security, Oh My!
It’s not lions and tigers and bears we’re dealing with this morning, but gays, Hispanics, and national security.
Over the weekend, the United States Senate voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Suddenly there are reports in the media about gays currently serving in the military. Who knew there were any?!
But in siding with their gay constituents, Democrats threw their Hispanic constituents under the bus — they’re as reliably Democrat as African-American voters, so they really don’t care. The DREAM Act died.
Now the question is whether the Democrats can get enough votes for the START Treaty. According to the Constitution, they’ll need two-thirds of the Senate to pass it. Republicans, who are rumored to have tried a deal to pass START and kill DADT, may very well kill the treaty now.
At least Congress will finally go home. By the way, did they ever do anything about jobs?
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2. An Avenue for Mike Pence?
Ron Brownstein has a very interesting article out today for National Journal about how the field of candidates is shaping up for 2012. He posits that the field is shaping up to be between managers like Mitt Romney and populists like Sarah Palin.
I think that is, largely, a false dichotomy, but if you change what he means by “manager” I think he is on to something. I’d use a word like “establishment” or even “conventional” to describe the end of the field Brownstein calls “managerial.”
But there is a relevant point here that I think needs to be explored, because I this I think Brownstein hit on something that is going to be exploited, or could be exploited, by someone like Mike Pence and only a select few others.
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3. Potemkin Villages of Democratic faith.
This New Republic article on the Democrats’ abrupt loss of religious voters suffers from a fatal flaw: it’s all ‘how,’ and no ‘why.’ Despite the slightly breathless tone of the author, the ‘how’ is both obvious and not particularly surprising: from 2004 to 2008 the Democrats actively went out and told voters that liberalism and religious belief complemented each other. The Democratic party spent a good deal of money and resources on that message, and it paid off in 2006 and 2008. Since that point, the Democrats have effectively stopped their religious outreach except among African-American voters - and their support among religious voters has effectively cratered. That’s the ‘how.’
‘Why’ is more interesting, though.
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4. …And, So It Begins: The Public-Sector Ponzi Scheme is Collapsing
You’ve been hearing for quite a while now that public-sector unions are a threat to the economic survival of the United States. With an estimated unfunded liability of up to $3 trillion (and perhaps much more), public-sector pensions are a noose around the neck of America’s taxpayers and it is threatening to strangle the nation.
More specifically, you’ve been hearing that the expensive wage and benefits packages that union-bought Democrats have given to their union benefactors could collapse our economy. The question is, can we stop it before it it too late, or at a minimum, contain the damage?
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5. Filibuster Reform - “The Quest for Absolute Power”
Liberals want to do away with the filibuster, in the name of “Filibuster Reform,” so they can have complete control over the Senate agenda in the next Congress. Before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took over his position as the most powerful member of the Senate, he was against filibuster reform. Now he is for it. The fight for so called Filibuster Reform is merely a “quest for absolute power” by Senator Reid and his liberal allies.
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6. Why Ken Paxton Should be Texas Speaker, and Why it Matters
The race for Texas Speaker is now in full sprint. The finish line will be the first week of January – and it’s time for all good Texans to take action to make sure we have a conservative Speaker of the House.
Erick and Drew Ryun have written several posts detailing this fight. Joe Strauss is the incumbent Speaker, having risen to that post two years ago by garnering the overwhelming support of Democrats (65) as well as 11 weak-kneed Republicans. The result? Almost half of committee chairmanships to liberal Democrats and still others to those weak Republicans, causing a much larger percentage of Republican bills to be killed than Democrat bills, and abandonment of important measures like Voter ID.
But while it is obvious that Joe Straus should not be the Texas Speaker – it’s TEXAS, after all – why should it be Ken Paxton, and why should you care?
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7. Obama’s Path to Energy Independence?
Via correspondent Poe Leggette, the Western Energy Alliance’s analysis of oil and gas leasing in the RockY Mountain states under the last three administrations . . .
Bear in mind that the Federal government is the primary owner of much of the land in several western states. Combine that with the fact that the March 2010 Lease Sale was the last one we’ll see in the Gulf of Mexico for the foreseeable future, and you can begin to see how hostile the Obama administration is to domestic oil and gas exploration.
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